


The Spirit of Christmas

by Altariel



Series: Obsidian Gothics [4]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 05:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altariel/pseuds/Altariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post-WYLB story with a festive theme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [圣诞夜之梦|The Spirit of Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10415718) by [plotdog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plotdog/pseuds/plotdog)



> I'm sure someone has done this before, but here's another version, anyway. Many thanks to Diana Challis for geological advice on a planetary scale! And, of course, to Cardie-ologist, for all her help.

The dead of winter, and bitter cold. Garak stood on the plasticrete steps outside the makeshift offices used by the new government, blowing on his hands in an effort to warm them, and watching black rain lash down on what remained of the Cardassian capital. He looked up dispassionately at the dark sky, where the clouds carried the dust of a ruined civilization and flung it back at the decimated population in relentless storms that poured polluted water down onto the planet's surface. 

It was months now since the sun had last pierced its way through the clouds. As autumn waned, the city had entered a perpetual twilight. The days had grown shorter and the sky darker, until sunlight was a distant memory - a cruel punishment for a people that craved its heat. Night brought brief solace, hiding for a few hours the devastation from the survivors, who had entered a numbed despair as the gloom and the cold of winter relentlessly advanced. Sometimes Garak felt as if the world were about to end. Then he remembered that it already had. 

Two of his colleagues were leaving behind him, talking about the day's meeting - an unsatisfactory session with Federation representatives in which they had been reviewing the environmental clean-up programme on Cardassia Prime. The Starfleet medical adviser on the team was a woman in her forties; competent, efficient, intelligent, and sensible enough not to waste time giving sympathy that wasn't wanted. She was also not Julian Bashir.

Garak decided not to think about that, but sighed deeply anyway. This had the unpleasant effect of filling his lungs with the polluted air, triggering a coughing fit. His two colleagues turned, and one clapped him on the back until the choking subsided. 'You forgot your mask,' she said helpfully. Garak found himself apologizing, swallowed, and pulled out his face mask, tightening it across his mouth and nose. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, nodded goodbye, shivered, and set off on the cold and wet walk home.

It was eight months since the Federation had started the atmospheric clean-up. A ring of deflectors had been placed into orbit to force the dust to particulate and rain out. Transporters had been placed above the main ecological areas, beaming dust out of the atmosphere, in the fragile hope of preventing a mass extinction. It was a massively expensive operation, bankrolled by the Federation, but there had, as yet, been no discernable effect. Each morning Garak would look at the sky for a suggestion that the dust clouds were clearing, for a hint of a dawn; each morning he was disappointed. The Federation scientific team talked about the difficulties of working against Dominion technology, about the immensity of the task; they had begun seriously to push for the evacuation of Cardassia Prime. Such suggestions were invariably met with stony silence by the Cardassian government. Garak remembered Bashir's frustration at such a response - back when Bashir still made the journey to Prime. 

'You're going to have to make your colleagues understand that at some point lives will be lost on an unimaginable scale, Garak.' 

Garak did not answer at once, then pointed out what seemed to him to be obvious. 'That has already happened.' 

'Well, it's going to get worse.'

Garak had shrugged, to Bashir's infuriation, but had not attempted to explain, again. Why should they leave? It was barren, it was dying, but it was their home. In a similar situation would Bashir, Garak wondered, accept a total evacuation of Earth? Perhaps he would. Humans seemed so strangely rootless, so ready to move on. But for Cardassians, home was home. Even if it meant the loss of most of the lives on the planet, they could never leave here. It was easy to argue that case for another planet, for another people. The Federation scientists could not be committed to saving Cardassia in the same way as its people - and there was, of course, the excessive cost. They could not see beyond the cold equations that told them that evacuation was now the best, most cost-effective way to save lives. But Garak knew that before Cardassia Prime was abandoned, the Federation might as well go out and finish what the Jem'Hadar had started, and wipe every living being off the face of the planet. It would amount to much the same thing. 

And where would they go to, these refugees? Who would take them? Who would receive them with pity and compassion? They were a ruined nation, friendless by choice, destroyed by their own aggression. Was this the final, ghoulish joke of evolution? To allow the development of a species that, at its very height, would turn all its subtlety and achievements onto itself and rationally, willingly, select the irrational path of self-annihilation? 

As he walked on through the blackened remains of what had once been a large park, Garak came across a boy of about fifteen trying to sell bread to three children much younger than he was. Garak could see from its greenish hue that the loaf was contaminated. He pushed off his face mask and drew his disruptor.

'Put it on the ground,' he said. 

The budding spiv looked up in surprise, and registered the weapon. 'Hey, you're _not_ having it...!' he said, with bravado born of desperation. 

' _Put it on the ground_.'

Reluctantly, the boy did what he was told. Garak aimed the disruptor and fired. The food disintegrated in front of four pairs of regretful eyes.

'Now get out of here,' Garak said. 'And don't try to poison children again,' he added, knowing the words would have no effect, but feeling some residual responsibility that they had to be said. The youth fled. 

The three children looked at him. 'We wanted to eat that,' the oldest one said reproachfully. He must have been about eleven. His sister, a couple of years younger, pinched and thin, was clutching the hand of their baby brother. The little boy's body shuddered from the chronic cough which plagued everyone living on Prime. 

Rags and tatters. Sick and starving children. Garak looked down at the black puddles on the ground. 'It was poisoned. It would have made you ill, or killed you,' he explained.

'Who cares?' said the older boy, and started dragging his family away, in search of more food, toxic or not - whichever came first. A most perceptive point, thought Garak, and trenchantly put. He sighed a little, tightened the mask back around his face, and began walking again. 

_'You've given up, Garak. And if even_ you _have given up, then I don't see what hope there is for your planet, or your people.'_

The memory of that final set of exchanges seemed to be constantly at the forefront of his mind, lurching into focus whenever he let his thoughts drift. It had been at this point in the conversation, Garak recalled, that he had lost his temper. One of his more embittered tirades had followed, in which he had raged at Bashir's self-righteousness and arrogance, had turned the shame he felt for Cardassia's humiliation and their dependence on Federation generosity into a personal attack on the other man. He had done something very like this once before, he remembered, under the stress of the implant breaking down. On that occasion Bashir had weathered the onslaught, had patiently offered unconditional support. But this time the friendship, already fractured, had not been able to withstand the strain. Bashir had withdrawn, retreated, and left Cardassia for good. Left Garak to the cold rain and the dark skies, and the empty days that promised only obliteration.

He was close to home now, and anxious to get out of the rain, but he detoured slightly to go and collect his rations. He passed through rows of tiny prefabs, issued by the Federation and put up in a matter of hours, functional but rather bleak, and which now housed many of the dispossessed residents of Cardassia City. Districts like this had sprung up across the city, each converging around a central office, staffed by Starfleet officers, who collected data on the survivors, provided medical care, defused local tensions, doled out replicated rations and, in the process, offered the only infrastructure Cardassia Prime now had. The officers staffing these Aid Centres were polite and efficient, despite the fact that they must have lost friends and colleagues during the war, and bursting with a uniquely Starfleet pride at doing such good work.

Garak stood in line, watching a group of new DPs being processed at the far end of the office. A mother and two children were being weighed, measured, jabbed with hyposprays, entered into the database, and assigned somewhere to live. It was all very no-nonsense, and Garak wished it could be done in private. Reaching the front of the queue, he offered his identity chip, and signed for his rations. As he picked up the packs of replicated food, the junior officer who handed them over spoke to him. 'Excuse me, sir - there's a parcel for you here.'

Garak blinked in surprise, and several people looked at him with some slight interest. The delivery of mail was very low on the list of priorities facing the authorities these days, but parcels could get through, if the sender knew at which Aid Centre the recipient was registered. But it tended to take a long time. Freighters and transporters in Cardassian space were almost entirely dedicated to supporting the food and medical supply lines. Garak took the little parcel from the officer and examined it curiously on his way out. The gusts of rain that hit him as he left the heated office were not as much of a shock to his system as the realization that this parcel had come from DS9, and its sender was Dr Julian Bashir. He stuffed the package into a pocket in an attempt to ignore it, but his thoughts were in turmoil for the rest of the walk. 

He reached the northern edge of the shanty town, and then he was home, or what passed for it. Here, amidst the ruins where once the wealthiest members of Cardassian society had had their exquisite homes, and where their few surviving members now stumbled, shell-shocked and shattered, Garak had staked his claim to the only piece of his old life that was left - Tain's cellar. His life, it seemed, had come full circle. As a boy, he had played down here by himself for hour after hour. Now, at what he firmly believed was the end of his life, he was here again, alone again, thinking that perhaps he had lived too long. In some of his darker moments, he would sit at the top of the cellar steps and look out across the wreck of the city, raise a glass to Tain, and thank him for his inheritance. In other moments, the darkest, he would not even make it out of the bed to the bottle. 

He lit some candles and took off his soaked jacket, pulling out the parcel and throwing it onto the bed. Bashir had come here once, had said he was appalled at the way Garak was living. To Garak it had seemed to be a mechanical concern. What could Bashir want now, Garak wondered, when the end was so close? He considered the parcel again, as it lay on the bed, then shook his head and tossed it onto the floor. He blew out the candles, climbed into bed and, as he waited for sleep, he reflected a little bitterly that Bashir was right, and that what Cardassia lacked could not be replenished by aid or technology or money. What Cardassia lacked was hope.


	2. Chapter 2

A chill draught woke him. He tried to bury himself deeper within the blankets, then realized that there was a light shining on him. His first thought was that he had left a candle burning and he sat up wearily. 

The light went out. Garak blinked at the darkness and rubbed his eyes. It remained pitch black. He must have dreamt it. He sighed and fell back onto the bed.

Out of the corner of his eye, the light seemed to come on again, then flickered and went out. He reached out and lit a single candle, and then the whole room was flooded with light. 

'Will you please stay awake this time?'

There was someone in the room. As Garak's eyes adjusted to the bright light, he could see that at the far end of the cellar was a man, dark-haired and with heavy-lidded eyes. These, reinforced by the slight curl to his lip, gave him a overwhelming air of extreme boredom. Wrapped around him was a purple cloak, a silver clasp holding it in place around his throat. 

Garak grabbed his disruptor. 'Who are you? How did you get in here?'

The man rolled his eyes. 'I do _tire_ of that as a welcome,' he said. 'People can be so obvious. I expected rather better of you, however.' He sighed. 'Well, let's get the introductions over - you're Elim Garak: spy, assassin, torturer, tailor - ' he counted the list out on his fingers, ' - and now a rather reluctant and frankly somewhat run of the mill government minister; I, on the other hand, am all-seeing, all-knowing, and really quite tired of having to go through this routine whenever I enter this appalling continuum. Do you like my cloak?'

'I know who you are,' Garak exclaimed. 'Q! Doctor Bashir told me about you.'

'Who?' He looked puzzled. 'Oh! The babbling doctor! I'd quite forgotten him. Given I'm omniscient, that means he must have been a particularly dismal example of his species.' 

Suddenly Garak realized Q was standing right next to him. He swung round to face him. 

'Yet he appears to be on _your_ mind rather a lot,' Q smirked.

Garak narrowed his eyes. 'Mind-reading as well,' he ground out. 'I can see now why you fail to be popular. Why are you here?' He moved away from Q warily. After hearing Bashir's story of the being's visit to DS9, he had taken the time to access the various reports and files held on the station's computer, and was well aware that Q's powers could not be overstated. 

'" _Why am I here_ "?' parroted Q. 'Yes, I get that one constantly as well. Most vexing. I'm _here_ , Garak, to take you on a journey, perhaps the greatest of your life. In fact, I promise you that by the end of our travels you will be _transformed_ , a new man...' He stopped. 'You don't look terribly awestruck.'

'I used to hear pitches like that from Brikanian salesmen touting second-rate silks. Perhaps I expected something rather more - _impressive_? Incidentally, that cloak is quite disastrous.'

'So you want to be impressed?' Q smiled, choosing to ignore the final remark. 'I think I can arrange that. Shall we go?' and he rested his hand on Garak's shoulder.

'Go? Where?' he managed to get out, before realizing that he no longer stood in the cellar, but somewhere else. 

It was a year since he had last been on the Promenade and at first it overwhelmed him. It had always been too bright for him and now, having spent so long in the gloom of Cardassia Prime, the artificial lights of the station were dazzling. He staggered slightly and reached out for the wall, but was startled to find that his hand seemed to have no weight and simply brushed through. He gasped in surprise.

'We are barely here,' murmured Q. 'We can't be seen, can't be overheard. We're no better than ghosts.'

'Why have you brought me here, Q?' Garak hissed. 

Q smiled wolfishly, then looked down the Promenade. 'Look who's coming,' he said. 'Your ridiculous young doctor. I think I prefer him unconscious. You'll probably recognize the other one, although I must say that I detest that tunic. Mustard really is the most revolting colour.'

Garak swung round in dismay. There, walking down the Promenade, were Bashir and himself. Despite what Q had said, which he didn't believe on principle, he felt a momentary panic that they might be seen, which was only allayed when Bashir passed an inch from his face and then walked through Q, who raised an eyebrow and pulled a face as if to say, ' _How rude!_ ' 

Garak started to follow them, finding the experience of spying on himself rather uncanny. They were walking from the shop into Quark's. Bashir was prattling away, he himself was quiet. Watching himself move slowly and deliberately, looking tired and thin, Garak realized that it could not be long after the implant had been switched off, maybe only a few days since he had left the infirmary. When they had sat down at a table he watched himself play with his food, listening to Bashir chatter.

'You shouldn't be back at work yet, really,' Bashir said, his mouth full.

'I have to make a living somehow,' he murmured, stirring the spoon round in his soup.

'What you need is a holiday.'

'I've just _had_ three weeks away...'

'In the _infirmary_ , Garak! That's hardly a holiday, is it?' Bashir's eyes suddenly lit up. 'Of course! I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Look, Garak, it's the Christmas holiday in a week. Why don't we celebrate it together?'

'Christmas?' He gave up on the soup and put down his spoon. 'I don't believe I've heard of that one before, doctor.'

He listened as Bashir babbled on, occasionally hearing words like 'festive', 'cheer', and something that sounded incongruously like 'missile-tow'. But mostly he just watched as the doctor spoke, completely enchanted by the animation of this man who was the only glimmer of light in his dreary existence.

Standing opposite himself, Garak watched the scene unfold with frank disbelief and shook his head.

'What's the matter?' said Q.

'I can't believe I was so transparent,' he murmured. 'So much for the enigmatic spy.'

Q snorted. 'And yet the doctor doesn't appear to have noticed. He really is rather dim.'

'Anyway,' Bashir was saying, 'All the human crew are taking the day off, but they're spending it with family. Why don't you come over and you can experience some Earth customs?'

He was touched by the offer, but couldn't risk it. 'That's very kind - but I don't think so, doctor,' he smiled. 'But thank you,' he added quickly, seeing the hurt on his companion's face.

'Look over there,' Q murmured. Garak drew his gaze away from the scene and, looking over at the bar, he saw that Quark and Dax were watching them intently. Dax seemed to be muttering something that looked remarkably like, _'Oh for pity's sake...'_

'Was every inhabitant of the station talking about us?' he mused.

'Only the more perceptive ones. Be glad it never got to the ears of that thug Sisko.'

'I'm not asking you out of pity, you know,' Bashir was saying quietly. 'I could do with the company.'

Garak watched himself as he looked down at his soup, then back at the young man's expectant face, then swallowed. 'Then I accept your invitation gratefully, doctor. And thank you for asking me.' 

Bashir's face broke into a wide smile. At the bar, Dax grinned and Quark poured them both a drink.

He had forgotten how guarded he had been at that time. Even this uncomplicated offer of company had seemed fraught with danger for him. But looking back now he was glad that he had accepted and he found himself remembering that day they had spent in each other's company with affection. He had not thought of it for a long time; recent memories had almost completely obscured it. He found himself smiling, very slightly, and with more than a hint of regret. 

'How cordial you both are,' Q said, his voice cutting through Garak's reverie. 'What _bonhomie_. It's really quite touching. It was all a little different a few years on, wasn't it?'

He felt a cold stab in his heart. 'I know what you're going to show me, Q, and I don't want to see it.'

'Why not?'

'If you really are omniscient, you might take the time to remember that Cardassians have near-perfect recall. I relive that memory _quite_ enough.'

But then he was back there, in his own personal hell, once more, and with a greater clarity than he had ever wanted to experience again. On the other side of the bar, Worf and Dax were having lunch with Kira and Odo. Kira was laughing, her eyes shining with happiness. Odo seemed content just to sit and watch her, his hand caressing hers with the gentlest of movements, a man who could not quite yet believe his good fortune. 

At their side of the bar, both he and the doctor were preoccupied; he could see that now. Perhaps that explained how the conversation had unfolded. They had talked desultorily about current events, then descended into an uneasy silence. 

'You've spent a lot of time with Sisko recently,' said Bashir eventually. 

'You'll notice the difference in his wardrobe,' Garak answered. Bashir looked at him coldly, since the lie was so transparent. 

'You've seemed rather busy yourself, doctor. What's this I've been hearing about a Director Sloan?'

Bashir froze. ' _What_ have you been hearing?'

'Nothing,' he lied quickly. 'Just the name.'

'Good,' said Bashir and turned back to his food. 

Garak sighed, and changed the subject. 'So what are your plans for Christmas this year, doctor?'

He saw a brief flicker of panic cross the doctor's face and realized that Bashir was worrying that Garak was hoping for an invitation. 

'I don't know,' Bashir mumbled through a mouthful of lasagne. 'Working, I suppose.'

'You've certainly been working exceptionally hard recently,' he replied. 'It must be nearly two months since we last met for lunch.'

'There _is_ a war on, Garak. In case it's passed you by.'

'Given that my homeland is being ravaged by an occupying power, I think you can assume that the war _occasionally_ brings itself to my admittedly capricious attention, doctor.'

They looked properly at each other for the first time.

'I'm sorry,' said Bashir and looked back down at his lunch. 

Garak carried on watching him coolly. 'Well, this _is_ pleasant,' he said eventually. 'I'm glad we took the time to meet. I really don't know how I would have gotten through the rest of the week without bickering with a friend over a frankly abominable meal.' He pushed his plate aside with a clatter.

'Why do you have to make everything so damned complicated?' Bashir shot back savagely, his voice as much of an undertone as he could manage.

Garak looked away angrily, around the bar. As he watched other people, he could see that several were watching them back. This place smothered him, he realized; there was no privacy. 'I didn't _ask_ to...' he snapped, before cutting himself short. 

'Ask to _what_?' Bashir was genuinely confused. Garak looked a little sadly at his friend and wondered once again what it was, to paraphrase Chief O'Brien, that made Julian Bashir so bloody obtuse. 

'To love you, Julian,' he finished. There, he'd said it - and it was only a few years too late. Yet now it was said he felt a strange sort of relief - mingled with a growing sense of fear. 

Bashir silently rubbed his face with his hand and Garak could see panic rising in the young man. 

'You don't look too happy at this revelation.' he carried on dryly, grasping for self-mockery as a perverse source of self-defence. 'Ought I to continue? Perhaps you don't want to hear how I've loved you from the first moment I saw you?'

'Garak, please...'

'How it's only the fact of your existence that's prevented me from ending this miserable excuse for a life years ago?'

'Garak, this really is neither the time nor the place.'

'You're right.' He threw down his napkin. 'I often wondered why we invariably met these days in such public places. I hadn't realized it afforded you such a sense of protection.' His voice was a little louder than he had intended. He saw that Dax was looking at them, frowning slightly.

'You're embarrassing me,' muttered Bashir, deliberately lowering his own voice to compensate. 

'Consider that imposition on your good nature ended.' He stood up. 'Good afternoon, doctor.'

'That's not where it ended, though, is it?' Q said languidly, watching Garak with amusement.

'What...?' Garak was still distracted.

'That wasn't the end, was it?' 

Garak tore his attention away from the scene. Dax had come over to Bashir, but they exchanged only a handful of words before he got up and stormed out of the bar. He half-turned his head to Q. 'No. He contacted me the following week and suggested we met for lunch. I was hardly going to say no. It was a chance to continue the friendship, even if on his terms. And I just couldn't be without him.' He sighed. 'He always had someone else there - O'Brien, Dax... I would talk incessantly, whatever came into my head, and he avoided my eye for months. What _ghastly_ occasions they were.'

'What I can't understand is why you never spoke before.' Q said impatiently. 'You people have so little time, you lead such drab, fleeting lives - and you waste it all on might-have-beens. Surely self-restraint is the privilege of the immortal - and even then I hardly see the point.'

'It wasn't as simple as that...' Garak whispered.

Q shrugged carelessly. 'Well, you know what they say. Better to have loved and lost...'

'Try it,' Garak said, through gritted teeth, then turned to face Q angrily. 'Whatever you want from me, Q, tormenting me with memories of my own shortcomings and failures is not endearing you to me. Perhaps we could terminate this tour of my times, _you_ could tell me what you want, and _I_ could get back to sleep.'

Q smiled. 'Watch,' he said.

The change in scenery came with a jolt. He stumbled slightly and felt Q's hand steady him. This was Cardassia, he saw, but that of his childhood. The sky above was the deep red of a Cardassian sunset - a colour he had believed he would never see again. It was late on a winter's evening and they were in the garden of Tain's house in the city. He closed his eyes. Knowing how this exquisite garden looked now made seeing it as it had once been acutely painful. 

' _Watch_...' he heard Q whisper.

He opened his eyes fearfully. Behind him a door opened, with a tiny creak. Whoever was opening the door was trying to avoid attention. 

Garak turned, sure of what he would see. A boy of about twelve stumbled out, trembling. Safely out of the house, he collapsed to sit down on the ground, wrapping his arms around his knees. He looked down the garden and Garak watched as he swallowed and his face started to crumble. He knelt down in front of him. 

'Don't,' Garak whispered. 'Don't let him defeat you.'

'He can't hear you,' his guide reminded him.

The boy put his head in his hands, but no sound came. _Of course_ , thought Garak, _I was beyond tears even by then._

He got up and turned away. He could not console him and he knew no-one else would come. In time the boy would stand up and go back inside, and everything would remain the same. 'Take me away from here,' he said to Q, his voice muffled. 

And then he was back in the cellar, maybe fifty yards from where he had just been, but a lifetime later. He was alone, although the single candle burned where he had left it. He reached over and blew it out, and then he collapsed in exhaustion onto the bed and into longed-for sleep, these sorry fragments of his life chasing him into his dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

Garak's eyes opened and he realized that he was not alone. He sat up. At the foot of the bed stood Q, resplendent in top hat and crimson frock coat, twirling a cane.

'Isn't it quite _magnificent_?' He threw his arms out, revealing a black and white waistcoat over a bright white shirt.

Garak cast a professional eye over the outfit. 'The cuffs are uneven.'

Q looked down in dismay. 'That's intentional,' he said hastily, throwing the cane on the bed and clasping his hands behind his back. 

Garak managed a slight smile. 'So what do you want this time, Q? I have to say your promise of a transformed life has fallen, as expected, rather short of the mark. I seem to have been left with the impression that my past was nothing more than a series of unhappy incidents and personal disasters,' he said rather bitterly.

'Have a little patience! We've barely begun - '

'If you think I'm going to spend any more time raking over the rubble of my life, you can forget it. I'd rather get back to being a mediocre minister.'

'You're hardly entering into the spirit of things,' Q complained. 'If this cynicism is all you showed that ridiculous doctor, no wonder he hotfooted it back to DS9. Anyway, I have no more interest in looking at your past. Your life hasn't been _that_ remarkable. But I'm not finished yet. We're staying in the present.' He clicked his fingers.

The cellar vanished, but the room in which they now stood was as dark. Garak knew instantly they were on DS9 - how well he recognized that particular bite in the air - and he screwed up his eyes to work out where.

They were in Bashir's quarters, he realized. And there, in the dark, sat Bashir, eyes closed, unmoving. A nearly empty whiskey bottle stood to his left. Garak reacted instinctively to the doctor's obvious distress and moved forward to touch him. As his hand reached the doctor's face, it passed through, and he cursed this questionable gift which left him close enough to see Bashir's unhappiness, but unable to console him.

Garak turned to look at Q. 'What's _happened_ to him?'

'Why do you care?' 

'Why do I _care_? Because he's...' Garak sighed. 'If nothing else, he was my friend, once.'

'Then I'll show you.' He clicked his fingers. 

Suddenly the room changed. The lights came on. Garak found himself looking at a strange tableau: on the left Bashir, his face a picture of confusion, hands stretched out in supplication; on the right, Ezri Dax, arms wrapped round her, in floods of tears.

'Domestic,' whispered Q conspiratorially. He rolled his eyes. 'How many times have I foresuffered this? And I can foretell the rest. Still, it's better to watch than take part.' He clicked his fingers. 

As if given a cue, the participants in this particular performance began to act out their parts. 

'You've spent so long hiding yourself you don't really know who you are, Julian. You spend your days getting meaning from helping others and your nights pretending you're happy with me. And none of it, _none_ of it, reflects what you really want.'

'How can you say that? I wanted to be a doctor more than anything else...'

'You wanted to be a doctor because it was the most respected career you could find. You didn't work very hard to stay a doctor when the news of your enhancements came out. And I notice you didn't leap to say how much you want me.'

He stepped towards her and she pulled back. 'Ezri, that's ridiculous. It _is_ you that I want, more than anything. I'm _sure_ of that...'

'Don't you see? You think I want to hear that, so you say it.' Ezri wiped her eyes again. 'And I _do_ want to hear it, more than anything. But only if it's the truth, Julian. And it isn't.'

' _Please_...' he reached out a hand to touch her face and she brushed it aside, almost violently.

'So - this is over,' she said, putting the hand to her mouth to stifle the sob. 'Go and find out who you are and what you want. And if it's really me, then maybe I'll be here, or maybe I'll have moved on. But I won't have one of your invented selves, Julian. I can get that in a holosuite.'

She turned and fled out of the room. Bashir fell back into a chair, clearly stunned at what had happened. 

'Poor Julian,' whispered Garak. He went to stand next to him and brushed his hand against the doctor's cheek, even though he knew it was a fruitless gesture. But then the doctor shivered slightly and looked round, a frown creeping over his face.

Garak started. _Barely here_ , Q had said. _Does that mean he_ could _somehow sense me, even if just a little...? Julian, I'm here. I'll always be here for you. Please, remember me..._

But then the doctor shook his head, stood up, and went for the whiskey bottle. The moment passed. Garak withdrew...

...and found that he was standing back on Cardassia Prime, looking down on the ruined capital city from the mountains on the west side. It was still raining, and a different bite in the air made him catch his breath. He had not been this way since coming home, and from this vantage point, looking down into the valley, the devastation was more savage, more desperate than he had imagined.

'This is a terrible place,' Q said. For once, there was no mockery in his tone, just the plain statement of fact.

'I know,' Garak answered simply. He looked at Q. 'You could make it right in a split second,' he said.

'Yes, I could,' he replied. 'But why should I? Why should I care?' He looked back at Garak, and his face was completely closed, his bored expression vanished, replaced by complete inscrutability. 

' _Why_?' Garak looked back at him in disbelief. 'Look at it!' He gestured into the valley, at the unspeakable sight that lay below.

'It's not as if Cardassia's own people care enough. It's not as if _you_ care enough, for example.'

'Not _care_?' It was wrenched out, as if torn from his soul. 'How can you say that? Cardassia is _everything_ to me. It's all I ever had, it's all I have left - such as it is...'

'You say these things, but you stopped feeling them years ago.'

Garak stood open-mouthed, Q's words so distant from what he believed about himself it was impossible for him to answer. He looked back at the city, his mind's eye overlaying the devastation with the graceful skyline of the past he had known so well, and he felt his heart would break. 

'How else can you explain what you did today?' Q said.

'What did I do?' he said, in complete confusion.

'Come and see.' 

He felt Q's hand on his shoulder once more and then they were down in the rubble of the city. They walked a little way, past knots of people huddled into broken doorways; others crowded round tiny fires. They went on, ghosts amid ghosts, until they reached the ruins of a row of houses. In the furthest house, a single room was still standing. They passed inside. 

Huddled together were two children. The boy, aged maybe eleven, was trying to calm a girl of nine. 'He won't die, I promise... I'll do everything I can...'

Garak looked in the corner of the room. A little boy, maybe three years old, was curled up there in a blanket. He was feverish, sweating and shivering. It looked like pneumonia.

'It will be cold again tonight,' said Q dispassionately. 'The youngest one may not survive. I doubt he has more than a few days left, if he's lucky. You let them walk away from you. Three children. And you claim to love Cardassia.'

'I didn't even think...' Garak whispered. 'And I should have, I should... What's happened to me?' He turned to look back at the older brother, recognizing the strained look of a child forced to mature ahead of his time. 

'We'll find someone to help us,' the boy was saying. 'Someone has to come and help us...'

'No-one will come,' said Q. 'As nobody came for you, when you were his age. Did you really want nothing about Cardassia to change?'

'Let me help them, Q,' he said. 

'That's not enough,' Q replied. He clicked his fingers and the night went black. 

**Four**

Garak opened his eyes, gasping with the force of his grief. It was still dark, but he could feel rain lashing against him, and there was thunder in the distance. He could see nothing but a black sky. This place seemed to be outside of time and space. 

'Q?' he said, his voice quavering slightly. There was a flash of lightning, and he saw before him a figure, dressed in black, with the head and the throat covered. Only the face was visible: eyes heavy-lidded, the stare no longer bored, but imperious. 

'Q, where are we?'

The figure cast his eye upon him and Garak was filled with a sudden fear. This was not the sparring, almost clownish character of before. This being was powerful, elemental. 

He did not speak, only pointed. Garak turned his head to look. Another flash of lightning illuminated a statue, and the thunder crashed overhead. Garak gasped at the brief sight that had lit up before him. He was standing in what had been the Memorial Park, before Damar's monument. He had thought he was somewhere else, but this was indeed Cardassia Prime - only worse, much worse, than in his own time. 

He turned to Q. 'Is this our future? We can't survive this. Was I right? Is there _really_ no hope?'

Q pointed again, and the lightning crackled, as if he were directing it. _Look,_ he seemed to be saying. 

Garak turned to look properly at the monument. Compared to the massive statues built throughout Cardassia's history, Damar's memorial had been small, but no other monument throughout all that bloodiest of histories had been raised with such reverence. Built from the scrap and the rubble that had once been the statues of those other, falser heroes, it was sacrosanct, the mark of Cardassia's remaining hopes for the future.

And it had been destroyed. The metal had been torn out. The stone had been attacked, torn at with disruptor fire. What was left had been defaced with graffiti, political slogans. _Damar took us to war and brought us to ruin._

'Not this...' whispered Garak and walked towards it, to touch the rough, ruined stone. Before he got there, the scene shifted before him. 

It was still pitch black, and the rain fell relentlessly. He saw the light of a torch piercing through the darkness. He was back home, before the entrance to his cellar. A figure emerged from the gloom, carrying the torch. It was one of his neighbours. Suddenly the hatch to the cellar opened, and a younger man, another neighbour, came out. 

'The old tailor's dead,' the young man said.

'About time,' said the other. 

The young man looked surprised. 'That's a little harsh.'

'The state we're in now - it's the fault of him and his kind. Military, Obsidian Order... they destroyed us. And then he had the nerve to come back and take part in the government!'

'I hear he fought alongside Damar,' said the young man uncertainly, looking up at the black sky.

'Damar!' said the other scornfully. 'An opportunist. Switched sides whenever it seemed the wind was changing. Maybe if he hadn't started that resistance we wouldn't be sitting in ruins.'

The younger man nodded, as if this was an idea he hadn't thought of before, but which, when spoken, made sense. That pained Garak more than he had imagined was possible. 

'And as for the tailor...' The older man spat on the ground. 'I hear he blocked the evacuation of Prime. Just because he didn't want to leave, he forced all of us to stay here too. All those people who died... I'm glad he's dead. Perhaps we've got a chance to get out of here now.'

It was a knife to his heart. In that split second, he saw through his most grievous delusion - that he, somehow, knew Cardassia and her people better than anyone else could - and he saw where this fantasy had brought the home that he loved so much. His mistake was that of Tain, of Dukat, of all the many leaders whom he had despised and railed against - he had looked to his own heart and, in his vanity, thought that it spoke not just for himself, but for the whole of Cardassia.

He fell to his knees. The sky went black.

He felt a touch of ice on his shoulder and it chilled the blood in his veins. He looked up and round. Q was looking down at him relentlessly.

'No more, Q, I beg you.' He dropped his head and closed his eyes. The hand clutched more tightly on his shoulder, bitter cold, demanding his attention. 

Garak raised his head and opened his eyes. Before him, with his back to him, stood Julian Bashir. 

'Julian...' he whispered.

The doctor turned, as if he had heard, but Garak knew that could not be so. Haltingly, unwillingly, Garak stood and faced his beloved, who looked through him and beyond him. 

Julian was older, his face lined and filled with regret. He looked up at the dark sky of Cardassia Prime then walked through Garak and away. And now Garak saw that in front of him, where Bashir had been standing, there was a grave, his own. 

_I have looked into the future - and it does not exist._

' _Julian_...' he cried, and it seemed to him that his desolation and loneliness echoed through the abyss.

The grip on his shoulder turned into a caress. ' _I'm here_ ,' his companion whispered, in his beloved's voice. The night became warm, and for the first time in what seemed an eternity, Garak wept. 

**Five**

He woke - suddenly - with tears still fresh on his face. The morning was very still. He lay there for a while thinking back on all he had seen. _Before now I would not have believed in second chances, but perhaps there_ is _still hope - for Cardassia, and for me._

He sat up. The room was empty and there was no sign that he had ever had a visitor - but by his side on the bed, as if placed there, was Bashir's parcel. He started to unwrap it but was distracted by a noise at the entrance to the cellar. Someone was tapping there, trying to get his attention. He got out of bed, went up the steps, and opened the door.

'Have you seen it?' It was his young neighbour, who seemed somehow excited. 'I _knew_ you hadn't been out. You haven't seen it, have you? You stay hidden down here in this cellar and you haven't seen it.'

'Seen what?'

'The _sky_ , you idiot! The clouds are clearing.'

Garak gaped at him and the man started laughing. 'It's ridiculous, isn't it? To get this excited over something that should be so ordinary. But for the first time I really think we're going to get through this nightmare. Come and see!'

Garak scrambled up the last few steps and followed him outside. It was true. Up above them, a small patch of violet sky, as clear and as unbearably fragile as crystal, was somehow holding its own against the dark clouds. Garak looked around him in amazement. Even this small amount of extra light seemed to have enlivened the city. People had come out from their makeshift houses, and were standing around in little knots, talking, some even laughing, a cautious excitement buzzing amongst them. In the crowd he saw some children, and remembered his task for the day, to find a family of three and make sure they would live.

'The officers down at the aid centre said the Starfleet technicians are besides themselves over at the lab,' his neighbour went on. 'They're saying it won't last long, but the breaks in the dust will get longer and longer. After that, it's only going to improve. Imagine - it's winter and it'll only _get warmer_!' He started to laugh.

Garak raised his face up to the sky, marvelling at the light, at this miraculous reversal of the seasons. As he looked upwards, the clouds above him parted, the rain stopped, and the sun's rays fell again on Cardassia City. Then the excitement of the crowd bubbled over, and suddenly the people around him were cheering and clapping, and embracing each other in joy. 

He realized that he was still holding the parcel and he finished unwrapping it with shaking hands. It was a book, by Dickens, but his attention was diverted as a small piece of paper fell out from between its pages and onto the ground. He stooped down and picked it up, recognizing Bashir's scrawl as he unfolded the paper and read.

_I found myself remembering that we once shared good times. It seems to me we've both been idiots. I'll be coming to Cardassia Prime in a fortnight, at Christmas. We should meet - and talk. Julian._

Clutching the book to his chest with his left hand, Garak stretched up the right, as if to greet the sunlight, and he traced the rays as they warmed his face. Then he realized that once again there were tears streaming down his cheeks and, since he was now no longer weary of living, he welcomed the tears as much as the sun, for they both held promise, and the promise was life. 

***

_Written December 2000_


End file.
